Chapter 311 - Give Nothing

Nate drifted through the spatial aperture, eyes closed as he basked in the sensation of space twisting around him in what could only be described as a loving embrace. The sensation felt like a parent ruffling his hair gently or when Kiri wrapped an arm around him. The spatial ripples drifted over him and he knew that if he wanted to, he could take some of what was around him and absorb it into himself.

The feeling only lasted a few seconds and Nate managed to maintain his self control and not annoy The System again by draining its portals of the Conceptual energy that was bound within them. Instead he appeared inside of a bricked up room with a single exit, a notification flashing in the corner of his vision and a stone pedestal waiting next to him.

The notification came first.

You have entered a System Challenge (Solo)!

There is no Assessment Period for System Challenges.
System Challenge: The Endless Maze
System Challenge Tier: Variable
System Challenge Rules: Find an exit.
System Challenge Rewards: Points awarded based on how far into the Endless Maze you get. Other rewards may be found within the Endless Maze.
Exit Conditions: Exit through portals within the Endless Maze. Alternatively, crush your Challenge Stone found in the pedestal beside you and you will be ejected. Crushing your Challenge Stone will result in no rewards.

The rules seemed simple enough and Nate scooped up the Challenge Stone in case, against all odds, he encountered a problem or issue he couldn’t solve. Doing a last minute check he reviewed his current state. He’d spent a hefty amount of Divine Energy completing his last Ability but even with that cost he still had over a hundred and twenty Divine Energy remaining. More than enough when compared with most other Lesser Divines. His Regalia was active with a Barrier Rune powering his defences. For additional awareness he had a Sound and Sight rune active. Finally, though it wasn’t currently powered, he had a Shaped Destruction rune ready to go. That was ignoring the gallery of Nate’s, his veritable army of self-portraits, waiting inside of his inner world, ready to take the fall in his place.

With everything prepared, he strolled through the first door and found himself in a literal maze. Across the walls grew lichen that glowed a pale yellow, the only light in the sealed brick hallway. Nate could feel the power and Concepts within the dark red bricks that lined the walls and enclosed the roof. They screamed of Durability and oddly, Despair. Divine Energy flowed into Nate at recognition of a new Concept and while he was thankful for his ever growing repertoire of knowledge he was curious about why such a Concept was present.

So far he remained unaffected by the Concept, his Soul Barrier constantly flexing to resist the subtle effect. However, the constant protection of his soul was draining his mana. Once upon a time, such things were an issue. Now, with his inner world which was piled with all his mana gems, it was an annoyance at best.

Nate paused his review of the wall to take in the path forward. His awareness was muted in this place, likely an additional effect of the Endless Maze, but he could still get a feel for what was ahead through Conceptual Sight. To the left was poisonous. To the right was sturdy.

Nate chose the right. Poisons were a pain in the ass and corrosive effects were the bane of his barrier. The path wound back and forth and Nate easily avoided dead ends as they always felt like nothing. A few mechanical traps were scattered across the path but they all required a far closer point of contact to trigger them and with his Conceptual Sight he simply walked around them. After ten minutes he walked through a gap in the brick walls and into a courtyard open to the sky. Above him hung a pale yellow something. It definitely wasn’t a sky. If he was being honest with himself, it kind of reminded him of a thick custard, the way it ballooned in and out like a liquid.

Ignoring the custard sky, he focused in front of himself. A stone golem stood in the middle of the courtyard, the source of the Sturdy Concept. Nate didn’t even raise a hand. His eyes could see where the golems ‘heart’ was, a crystal containing soul energy in the lower left of its abdomen. A beam of pure Destruction lanced out and the heart was no more. Nate kept walking. The thing had been a high-level Mythic-tier enemy, levels in the mid two-hundreds. Perhaps enough to force a normal fourth-evolution Lesser Divine to pull out a few stops.

Nate found himself growing bored as he walked. He wanted to score highly on the System Challenge, but the rules hadn’t specified a time and rushing seemed like a recipe for disaster with all the various traps and tricks. He ignored a door that led into a trap instead walking through the illusory wall in front of him. Two turns later and he hovered over a set of mechanically trapped floors designed to unleash alchemical flames through the hallway. Then came a puzzle room with a door with eight locks and seven keys. You were supposed to unlock the locks in a sequence, but one of the keys was fake, the real one found in a hidden slot in the roof of the maze while the eighth key was made by combining three of the keys together. It took Nate less than ten seconds to solve and open the door. He walked past a Challenge Exit and continued on deeper. 

Then there was another battle, this time against a Fire Elemental. Nate rained on its parade. Then a colourless, odourless poison in the following chamber. It couldn’t pass through Nate’s barrier. Then a few magical traps, two hidden doors that were actually portals that would dump those who crossed their apertures into a pool of lava, followed by another puzzle room.

Through it all, Nate felt that he was yet to be challenged and so his mind wandered as he walked unerringly deeper into the maze. His thoughts kept drifting back to his final Ability, Created Space, and how that meant he could remove his Class Core that instant if he so desired. He had the debt from The System. He had completed all of his Abilities for his Divine Vessel. The only thing stopping him was that his Divine Vessel wasn’t yet where it needed to be for him to make the transition. That delay, that being bound for a moment longer, vexed him.

In his mind he could see the parallels between Arikanvil’s feelings and his own. The difference, he reminded himself, was in what each of them would do with their freedom. If Arikanvil got his freedom, ignoring the fact that it would wipe out billions, maybe even trillions of lifeforms, he would use that freedom to steal. That was what he had done before and that was what he would do after, the only difference being he might be strong enough to go do so in another Reality. The Nine Heavens knew that there would be almost no one left to oppose him in this Reality besides Ankh’aris and a few other hidden old monsters.

Nate on the other hand wanted the freedom to help his friends back on Galle. To give his knowledge and gifts freely and make a world where he could create art in peace. They were opposites, like oil and water. One took selfishly and the other gave freely. Nate reminded himself never to become like Arikanvil as he continued his walk into the depths of the Endless Maze, filing away his plans for removing his Class Core for a later date.

The maze continued to be straightforward. Nate picked up an extra Low-Grade Divine Artifact after he found it behind a secret aspect of one of the puzzle rooms. He fought against a flitting beam of light that cut like a razor, drowning it in Shadow before collapsing it. He avoided spores from mushrooms, brushing them aside with his barrier and a Wind rune, before facing yet another puzzle room. That one had been on a timer, with the walls closing in as Nate was forced to gather pieces, construct shapes, then fit them together on the correct pedestals to unlock the gate. When he’d started the room was twenty metres long by twenty metres wide. When he finished the room was a few centimetres short of twenty metres long by twenty metres wide. Another exit was ignored, this one marking the ninth since he started.

He walked across a bridge that traversed a lake, heeding Kiri’s advice and not entering the water. Not that he needed to go into the dark blue depths to sense the exceptionally large octopod hiding beneath its still surface. He’d locked eyes with the beast, each of the beasts four eyes matching Nate in size. They’d stared at each other for ten seconds and then the beast, wisely, had decided that Nate was not someone it wanted to bother and had vanished into the darkness.

Walking through a gateway of bricks on the other side Nate found another courtyard, this time with a being made of slowly drifting shadows waiting. Nate approached the floating creature with caution. Where the Stone Golem had whispered of Sturdiness, the Fire Elemental hummed with Heat, and the Light Blade shivered with Sharpness, this being screamed of Darkness, Despair and Soul. The being followed Nate’s slow approach, spinning to face him fully.

“First one, now two,” the thing of Shadow rasped, its voice like nails down a chalkboard. “What do you want?”

“What do you mean?” asked Nate, suspecting this being was not another Challenge, but the Curator of said Challenge. The whisper of Despair in the walls held a similar flavour, after all.

“To leave…what do you want…to leave?”

“You want me to leave the Challenge?” asked Nate.

“You take, but do not give. No taste of despair, no whisper of soul, no falling into the darkness. You give nothing. What will it take for you to leave?”

Nate thought he understood what was taking place. The being before him, the Curator of this System Challenge, fed on the despair of those that entered the challenge, or upon a portion of their soul energy. They were supposed to despair as they were poisoned, struggled to deal with the puzzles and were confronted by physical challenges in the form of battles. Slowly growing worse and worse until they either succumbed to their wounds and despaired over a slow death or crushed their Challenge Stone, another form of Despair since they would get no points for doing so while losing points for entering the Challenge.

“I want points,” stated Nate.

An exit spun into being on the wall.

“Take the exit,” the Curator rasped. “It will grant you two-hundred points.”

“Is that the maximum?” replied Nate.

The roar of anger that followed was not loud. It did not scream its fury. It rumbled throughout the maze, shaking the walls and disturbing the lake behind them.

“Two-hundred is enough. You leave.”

Nate could feel Reciprocity needling him in his chest. The being was making demands that it couldn’t back up. A trade was fair play, but a demand was not.

“I think I will go deeper. Two-hundred points is not enough. Perhaps I will find more Divine Artifacts as well. This place seems ripe for a few. I need a Peak-Grade Soul one for my sister.”

“She has it,” hissed the Curator. “Her price to leave. Peak-Grade Soul Artifact.”

“Why was she wet then?”

Nate could definitely see Kiri bargaining for a Peak-Grade Soul Artifact instead of points, but that didn’t explain why she was in the water. If the beast lurking below was smart enough to recognise him as a threat behind his layers of barriers and wards then it would certainly avoid going after the woman coated in a Regalia that screamed Destruction.

“Such a request was extreme…but the damage she was doing to my maze was…unacceptable. I dropped her reward for leaving into the water.”

Nate snorted at the loophole. The bastard had tried to kill his sister. The beast below the lake might have been unwilling to fight him while he was not completely within its domain. Apparently going beneath the water was a whole other matter. Either way, this Curator seemed like a prick and Nate didn’t mind inconveniencing someone like that.

“Four hundred points and a Peak-Grade artifact of Destruction, or I will walk deeper and see if this maze truly is Endless,” stated Nate, steel in his tone.

The rumbling roar came a second time.

“Your points, and a Peak-Grade artifact, but not of Destruction. I decide. Or we go deeper together and we find out if you can survive the depths of my home.”

Nate nodded in acceptance. While he could possibly get more points by going deeper, he’d already been walking for most of a day and they were on a timetable. Most of the others should’ve been out already, if not all of them, and they still needed to get to the final System Challenge and start setting up the battlefield for the ensuing ambush.

A moment later Nate was exiting the portal, a Peak-Grade Artifact of Distraction in his hands and another four-hundred points to his name. The crew was already aboard the Solaris and within minutes they were flying onto the next target while they regaled each other with stories of their time in the Maze.

*************

“It happened again, sir,” called out Link.

Captain Borin Vaughn of the Golden Tide glanced at his Information Specialist then brought up the Individual Leaderboard. 

Individual Leaderboard (Top 12)

1. Nathaniel Weber - Risen Sun Sect (1782)

2. Kiri Beaufoy - Risen Sun Sect (958)

3. Wulfgar Bjornson - Risen Sun Sect (682)

4. Kalin Silverscale - Dynasty of the Heavenly Serpent (408)

5. Kole Darkscale - Dynasty of the Heavenly Serpent (397)

6. Captain Borin Vaughn - The Golden Tide (386)

7. Sel’kin Might - Flux Industries (382)

8. Drim Hall - The Eternium (363) 

9. Wu To’sama - The Starbreaking Guild (237)

10. Perenthia Illari’svell - Severing Blade Sect (205)

11. Gee’k Dumma - Dynasty of the Heavenly Serpent (192)

12. Lunar Sylvin - Dynasty of the Heavenly Serpent (184)

It was just as Link had said. Once again, Nathaniel Weber had leapt ahead by an astonishing amount. It was clear to Borin that Kalin Silverscale, Kole Darkscale, Sel’kin Might and Drim Hall had all completed a System Challenge like he had. But they, like himself, had been focusing on collecting Divine Artifacts. The rewards at the end of the World Reaping from The System might be excellent but it was more than possible to gather as much if not more Divine Energy just from collecting artifacts.

It seemed to Borin that Nathaniel Weber was either taking a different approach or he was vastly more capable than even Grand Marshal Grommir believed. The Grand Marshal had been clear on Borin’s tasks though. Beyond competing as normal in World Reaping, the Captain was to assist Nathaniel Weber and Kiri Beaufoy if needed, and to target Flux Industries and The Eternium if given the opportunity. According to Link, Borin was going to get to do both.

“The intel is good?” he asked, wanting his Information Specialist to voice his opinion.

“The information is the same that was sold to Kalin Silverscale and those he has recruited to his cause.”

Borin nodded. They could be walking into a trap, but then again, so could Kalin. That slippery snake would know it too. So they wouldn’t go fast. They’d go slow, close the net bit by bit. The Grand Marshal always said understanding your enemy was the first step to victory. If Kalin was going to go slow, then they would go fast and try and meet up with Nathaniel before the fighting started. Then, with a little luck, Borin might get his chance at taking the head of Chairman Kalim’s direct disciple. The rewards would be excellent.

“We move out, triple speed,” he called to his squad.

A moment later they were mounted on their flying boards and rocketing over the trees below for the volcanic area of the smaller, southern continent.